Online Personals Watch: News on the Online Dating Industry and Business

Exhaustive Blog Post About PPL Scam By Elena Petrova That's Worth Reading

ELENA'S MODEL BLOG - Apr 19 - Elena Petrova, founder & CEO of ElenasModels.com calls on all PID sites (premium international dating sites) to stop PPL. "PPL sites face real prospects of being questioned by federal investigators in the near future and fined for millions for aiding fraud", she wrote in her blog post. "Let's call legitimate media representatives and computer experts. We are ready to open our books, databases, computer code to any legitimate media representatives or federal agency, regardless of whether PPL sites wish to do the same", she continued. "If you cannot make money without scamming your clients, then you should not be in this business."

PPL stands for "pay per letter", a system of communication on "dating" sites where users are charged for every message they send or receive through "credits". The largest PPL company claims 1.3M users and 500 agents that provide content (messages, chats), for which they are paid. Men usually pay $1k-3k for communication with impersonators or fake "brides" during the course of a "relationship". According to insiders, PPL industry turnover exceeds $200M annually, and 30k people are employed in Eastern Europe by agents of PPL companies.

The simplest way to detect PPL scams is to look at the communication abnormalities. PPL fraudsters spam men with mails, sending 400-500 mails and chats invitation daily. Genuine women usually send their first message to 3-4 men only, not hundreds. Most of them prefer that men contact them first. On PPL sites, it’s usually men that get swamped in mails and chats.

See full article at Elena's Models blog

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Summarized by the IDEA team

Google To Ban Premium International Dating Sites

OPW - Aug 20 - Google has just updated its Adult content Adwords policy. From this September, mail-order bride sites, international marriage brokers, and romance tours will be prohibited from advertising on Adwords. Those affected by this change received a 2-month notice that this category was under review. However, Google did not provide any information how the policy will be implemented. "Seriously, Google has no concern for the impact on many businesses supporting 1000's of jobs [legitimately] and intends to categorize 100's of perfectly moral and ethical business without a rational basis of implementing such policies', said Elena Petrova, CEO of Elenasmodels.com.

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Post by Courtland Brooks team

ElenasModels.com Dating Site CEO Interview, Elena Petrova

OPW INTERVIEW - Feb 6 - Elena Petrova is the CEO of ElenasModels.com, which is a Premium International Dating (PID) site that brings Russian women together with men for long term relationships. I interviewed Elena to get an overview of what her founding story is, and how ElenasModels.com is different.

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Post by Mark Brooks @ Courtland Brooks.

Elena's Models To Provide Russian Language Lessons To Its Clients

PRESS RELEASE - Dec 28 - Dating site Elena's Models is partnering with video learning website "Learn with girls" to provide affordable Russian language lessons to its clients. Elenasmodels.com is an international dating site for people seeking relationships, romance, and long-term partners. It has been established in 1999.

See full article at PR Newswire

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Summarized by the Courtland Brooks team

Elenasmodels.com Displays "Response Rates" In Profiles

PRESS RELEASE - Oct 27 - International dating site Elenasmodels.com introduced a "Response Rate" feature in its latest system update. Profiles now display the percentage of replies a user provided to previous requests. Elena Petrova, the founder of Elenasmodels.com, believes that even candidates who prefer to ignore incoming mails may put a bit more effort in the initial communication.

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Summarized by the Courtland Brooks team

Elena Petrova, CEO Of Elena's Models Interview

OPW INTERVIEW - Mar 8 - Elena's Models is unusual in the Premium International Dating (PID) space because it charges a flat monthly membership. Most PID sites charge per communication. As the world gets smaller, I believe there will be more of a call for PID services, and so this is an interesting space for us to review from time to time. Elena Petrova is the CEO/Founder of Elena's Models. Here's her story, and overview. - Mark Brooks

What is Elena's Models founding story?
After I moved overseas to join my husband in 1998, I came across a lot of websites talking about Russian women. I found their opinions surprising. This is why I started my first website womenrussia.com. In 1999 I wrote a book called "101 Tips How To Marry a Foreigner", talking about international relationships. Russian Cosmopolitan picked my book and included it in their review, and I started to receive enormous amounts of requests from Russian and Ukrainian women who wanted to try international dating. This is how Elena's Models came to life. I already had profiles of my friends on womenrussia.com and men kept asking me if the women were real or models. So I renamed womenrussia.com to Elena's Models.

How is Elena's Models different from other companies in the Premium International Dating segment?
Elenasmodels.com works very much the same as any dating site for people seeking partners locally. We encourage direct communication and exchange of contact details between members. Most other sites within our market segment moved to pay-per-letter model.

Also we try to bridge cultural gaps the best we can. We offer a lot of facts about current daily life in Russia and Ukraine on our blog for men.

How do you charge members?
We charge a one-off membership fee.

• On the lowest level (3-month Gold, $129) it allows a member to contact 50 women
• The next level (3-month Platinum, $259) removes all limits
• The next level (Ultimate) includes some personal assistance services such as interviews with women they wish to visit, VIP Dating Coaching Program, profile reviews, etc.

What's next for Elena's Models?
We have some exciting plans in the pipeline. A new niche dating app is under way, under different branding and pricing structure. When the test site for the new App is completed, we will be seeking a funding to support its ongoing development. We believe our 17 years of online dating expertise and successful monetization make us a solid partner for those interested in investing in our new venture.

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Post by Courtland Brooks team

Ukrainian Dating Sites Employ People To Chat With Men

PR WEB - Apr 20 - According to Elena Petrova, owner of Elena's Models, women and men in Ukraine are being employed by local operators to pose as "brides" in online chats, send messages and letters from accounts of beautiful model-looking girls. She published a report about hidden practices of pay per letter (PPL). Usually, letters, chats, phone calls, and sharing of photos evoke charges starting from $3 and onward. While PPL dating sites insist that payments are required for translations, the report reveals that in many cases the communication is produced by substitutes without any input from the females male customers believe to be dating. Marriage agency employees whose job is to sit through the nights chatting with men claim earnings up to $1000/month, with some authors claiming to be doing this job for years with stable monthly income of $300-$500.

See full article at PR Web

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Trademark Violations Court Fight

COURTHOUSE NEWS - May 3 - Anastasia accuses Elena's Models of trademark violations, false advertising, tortious interference and unfair competition, in Manhattan Federal Court. "Upon information and belief, Elena's Models operates or sponsors websites entitled 'anastasiadatefraud.com' and 'ruadventures.com.' Both of these websites disguise the identity of their owners by using a proxy service. However, they direct customers to the elenasmodels.com website. These websites accuse Anastasiadate of systematically perpetuating scams and fraudulent deceptions upon its customers, and then recommend that the customers use Elena's Models."

by Rebekah Kearn
The full article was originally published at Courthouse News, but is no longer available.

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Russian Dating Agency, ElenasModels.com, Releases Demographics

PR WEB -- Sep 13 -- Elena's Models (77,000 users from 176 countries since 1999), serves western men seeking Russian and Eastern European women for marriage. Men of all ages and walks of life join Russian marriage agencies but the mature men pay. Younger men appear to be in a 'window shopping' mode. Most paying members are from the U.S., followed by the U.K. The average age of paying members is 43, vs 38 for non-paying members. Only 5% of paying members are under 30, compared to 21% for non-paying members. 91% of paying members are white. The majority are college educated white males 30-50 years old with previous marital experience.